Sunday, 29 October 2017

Dalhousie University Is "Swimming In A Sea Of White Supremacy"

I know some easy going White Canadians may scoff at the idea that this university is a citadel of White Supremacy. "How can this possibly be," they may ask in disbelief, "universities are totally committed to social justice, critical thinking, racial diversity, and Dalhousie is no different. Every professor is a cultural Marxist. Just take a look at the course offerings at Dalhousie, they are mostly about African Canadian Society, Genocide of Whites against Aboriginals, and Queer Culture."

During the same week that these revelations were coming, a group of 25 law professors at Dalhousie's Schulich School of Law called on the university not to "police and censor" minority students who are "challenging the oppressive power structures" of Whites at Dalhousie and Canada.

Masuma Khan

But the most damaging revelation about White supremacism, the one that actually prompted all the individuals cited above to finally speak out, came from Masuma Khan, a Muslim Dalhousie student facing disciplinary action merely because she wrote a Facebook post with the hashtag "#whitefragilitycankissmyass" against White supremacist students who questioned a motion she proposed, as vice-president of the Dalhousie student Union, calling for students not to participate in Canada 150 celebration since Canada was based on "stolen lands" and "400 years of genocide."

As if this oppressive climate was not enough, this hashtag, and another post in which she said to Whites "f*** you all," prompted a complaint from a graduate history student named Michael Smith that "targeting 'white people' who celebrate Canada Day is blatant discrimination."

Apparently, Smith was unaware that it is extremely unfair to be complaining about oppressed non-Whites targeting White students in a university "swimming in a sea of White Supremacy"? Didn't he know that negative remarks can only be meaningfully directed against Whites since they are the ones who have been holding an 'oppressive system of exploitation' for centuries in Canada, as we have learnt at university.

Smith's complaint was taken up by Arig al Shaibah, the vice-provost of student affairs, a non-White man who fits the psychological profile of the colonized man Albert Memmi wrote about in The Colonizer and the Colonized. Arig al Shaibah is the "colonized who accepts" the colonizer's claim to superiority. He has accepted the mind set of the White Supremacist. This explains why he concluded that Ms. Khan violated a provision of the code of student conduct that prohibits engaging in "unwelcome" or "persistent" conduct that makes another person feel "demeaned, intimidated or harassed."

We Canadians are really lucky! Khan, and the 400,000 strong immigrants arriving yearly, are really trying to make Canada "better" by liberating it from the oppressive political structures Whites created. Imagine if they had stayed in their homes satisfied with their successful nations. But no, they sacrificed all the luxuries and freedoms of their lives back home only so they could "decolonise" this wretched land of Canada.

Let us realize that Nigeria, the homeland of Ikede, was the one country that developed the principle of representative government and freedom of the press. Nigeria was also, along with Namibia and Uganda, the birthplace of modern science and modern industry. Muslim countries, for their part, have been the most progressive in the last centuries when it comes to gay rights and women's rights. India has an excellent history of environmental protection, and China surpasses every nation in animal rights.

Speech Of Immigrants "More Valued And Protected"

The 25 law professors I mentioned above understood this very clearly in the letter they co-signed in defence of Khan's right to freedom of speech. We should not be upset when someone like Khan tells Whites to go f*** themselves. The "freedom of speech" of immigrants and non-Whites should be "more valued and protected" [when such speech] challenges majoritarian views, traditions, and practices that have caused harms to marginalized and oppressed minorities."

In trying to discipline Khan for her statements about Whites, Dalhousie forgot that "the same values of truth, democracy, equality, and individual fulfilment which underpin this legal commitment to the ["more valued speech of non-Whites] inform the core mandate of universities, including Dalhousie University."

Encouraging speech which challenges us as a community to reflect upon our roles in colonialism, oppression of marginalized communities, and systemic racism is critical to the mandate of this (or any other) university: censoring such speech is antithetical to that mandate.

Whites can only be thankful for this incredible constitutional guarantee for the special progressive role of immigrant speech.

Let's Decolonize White Supremacist Curriculim At Dalhousise!

It brings tears to my eyes thinking how much Khan has had to endure struggling against White supremacism in Dalhousie. We can only hope the day will arrive when the remaining supremacist course offerings in Dalhousie will cease and the English Department, for example, will stop teaching such discriminatory courses as "Renaissance Poetry & Culture: Donne to Milton," "English Poetry & Prose, 1660-1740," "19th Century Fiction: Austen to Dickens," and the like.

And it is not just the English Department that must be "decolonized." White books and "great" philosophers dominate the Philosophy Department; indeed the entire Faculty of Science, since all the scientific ideas taught in physics, biology, and chemistry are said to have originated in Europe. They don't teach any of the great ideas in biochemistry originated by the Aztecs, or the complex writings in oceanography that originated in the Congo.

I, Obimbola Chibuzo, thus call upon Dalhousie students to do what progressive immigrants are doing in Cambridge University where students successfully campaigned for the English curriculum to be "decolonized" and are now "turning their attention to other subjects, including history, philosophy and history of art." We have much to learn from a plan students and immigrant lecturers have set up at Cambridge called "Decolonising the Curriculum Faculty Research Initiative," which seeks to "generate and support efforts to revamp the entire curriculum" and to bring down all the statues and architectural symbols of Britain's past.

If Dalhousie is to commit itself to the "mandate" the 25 law professors said all universities must be committed to, the promotion of oppressed minorities against the continued oppression of marginalized communities, it must do as Yale University is doing:

We can only look forward to the day when Canada will be populated mostly by non-Whites and countless students will have modelled their lives after Khan and Ikede in getting rid of every vestige of White supremacy, including the White-created parliamentary system, all the statues of our past racist prime ministers, and, in fact, the universities themselves since they were invented by greedy White Supremacists.

Quote

The only way the identity politics of the left can be effectively challenged is with an identity politics that recognizes the biological grounding of humans as well as the kinship-based identities of nations.